


the eye over magnus falls

by linoone



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Small Town, Multi, Mystery, inspired by twin peaks and gravity falls, more characters appear but have relatively minor roles
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-08
Updated: 2020-06-03
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:46:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24073915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/linoone/pseuds/linoone
Summary: there is a town, nestled in an isolated corner of the woods, that is found on no map. its residents claim they’ve lived there all their lives, but no one can seem to remember the exact details of those lives and their faces are found in buried missing persons reports. cars that break down on the road disappear and travelers often find themselves wandering into town and never leaving. jon would have lived in blissful ignorance all his life, until an email finds its way to him, asking for his aid in investigating the strange happenings. his arrival shakes up the town, revealing more deep and dark secrets than he could ever have anticipated.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 18





	1. prologue: the anglerfish

**Author's Note:**

> big thank you to my lovely tma discord friends who let me ramble about an au based off of my favorite genre of spooky "small town with weird shit happening" to the point that i had enough ideas to craft it into a full fic. this fic may seem fairly episodic as i want to show all the characters and all the varieties of things that are happening to each of them but i do have an overarching plot in mind. this fic also borrows inspiration from a lot of other horror things i enjoy. i will list any inspirations i have. 
> 
> i do have some thots about adding ships in but i think overall the main focus is linked more to friendship. if i decide to include romantic ships, they'll be added to the tags at that time.

The road was long and winding, surrounded by trees on every side. Cars would occasionally pass by, not stopping to wonder what was just beyond the pines and they were lucky for it. A gas station stood, alone, amidst the trees, its flickering sign like a beacon for any weary travelers.

One such traveler found himself on that road alone. It was late and a fog had started to roll in, making it hard to see far enough ahead to anticipate the curves and turns of the road. He squinted, leaning forward in his uncomfortable seat in an attempt to see further.

“Damn it.” He muttered, watching the lights of his car barely penetrate the thick fog. “They need more street lights out here.”

That thought was momentarily forgotten when the traveler crashed straight into the guardrail. It threw him out of his seat, his body flopping against the seatbelt. It left him shaken, but after quickly looking himself over and his reflection in the rearview mirror, he decided that he was fine. His car, however, had taken the brunt of the damage, looking a bit like an accordion in the front.

Letting out a sigh, he reached for his phone. No service. Perfect. The traveler dragged his hand over his face in frustration. Flopping against the back of his seat, he stared at the fog ahead while the song on the radio faded out, static filling every note.

“ _ This is Georgie Barker and you’re listening to Magnus Falls Local Radio, bringing you the soothing sounds to guide you through those dark and lonely nights.”  _

The traveler let out an exasperated chuckle. It was certainly dark and lonely for him.

_ “For all you weary travelers, both of the mind and the body, let me bring you some words of warning. This is not the place for you. Do not stay here. If you can, move on and--” _

The voice was cut off, replaced with overwhelming static. The traveler groaned. He wasn’t going to be moving on now with his car in such a state. Sighing again, he turned the car off and stepped out. The fog seemed lighter now, but he still had no real idea where he was. 

He turned, seeing a flickering sign down the road. It stuck out amongst the pines, just tall enough for it to peek out. The traveler couldn’t read what it was, but there had to be someone there who could help him. And it didn’t seem too far.

The traveler began to walk towards the flickering light, holding up his phone’s dim screen in a weak attempt to see where he was. The fog clinged to him, almost suffocating, but a gas station came to view, almost appearing out of nowhere.

At first, it looked like there was no one there. He didn’t see any cars parked and the open sign was half flickered out. The traveler turned around to go back to his own abandoned car before, but instead he nearly crashed straight into the chest of someone else.

The man was tall, much taller than him, and his large physique was hidden underneath by a fisherman’s sweater and a long coat. He was pale as well with a bushy white beard and eyes that were equally as pale and unblinking.

“Are you lost?” The man spoke in a surprisingly friendly voice.

“Oh… kind of. This uh… stupid fog made me crashed my car.”

“Ah, the fog can make people do a  _ lot  _ of stupid things.”

The traveler managed not to look offended at that before glancing back towards where his car was. “Is there a mechanic here? Or a tow truck?”

“That would be me.”

“I need someone to get my car.”

The bearded man looked towards where the car was supposed to be. “I can take a look at it. You might want to go find a place to sleep for the night though.”

“I don’t know where to go.”

He let out a chuckle, like it was some kind of inside joke. Bright eyes flickering with some ill-suited humor, he pointed down the road to a small side road. 

“There’s a town down there. Get yourself checked into the motel and I’ll come and tell you when your car is good as new.”

The traveler’s brow furrowed. The voice on the radio had warned him not to stay, but he didn’t have much of a choice. The bearded man now wore a large smile that was probably meant to seem friendly, but it reminded him more of a shark about to make him his lunch.

“I guess I will.” The traveler managed, desperate to get away from the large figure looming over him.

He walked down the road to the town. It was tiny, a few buildings sticking out of the woods. He recognized what was a police station and a diner, but it was hard to focus on them. His head felt foggier than before as he walked towards the welcoming light of a motel sign. The bored teenager at the counter didn’t even ask for his credit card before handing him a keycard. The traveler entered the room and crashed onto the bed. He hadn’t even realized he was so exhausted. 

When he woke up, the worries of the night before were gone. He went down to the diner, getting a coffee and doughnut like he thought he had done every morning. He flipped through the newspaper and looked at the job openings. The day felt normal enough and his mind never once went to his poor car or the destination he had once had.

The car in question was gone by the morning. It resurfaced in a faraway lake with no signs of who it had ever belonged to. 


	2. new in town and it gets worse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a mysterious email brings jon to magnus falls. he gets his first taste of the kind of locals that live there.

London never suited Jon. It was too busy, too cluttered and often its residents were unhelpful and cold which didn’t mesh well with his line of work. And his favorite coffee shop had closed years ago and he still hadn’t found any that made his tea exactly as he liked it. And it was hardly a place for a man who spent his time researching and writing papers on the nature of the supernatural and the mythology surrounding it. As much as the amount of strange occurrences made up for the lack of any feeling of home.

His home barely felt like a home as much as a small two bedroom flat he had rented not too long after graduating university. The best he could say about it was that he could have a study and that study, though filled with all his books and research, was cold as could be in the winter no matter how many times he kicked the radiator to get it started and a sweltering sauna in the summer. But it was functional and he couldn’t beat that. Or rather, it simply wasn’t worth the effort to look anywhere else.

Jon had been in his study, head buried in his notes when he heard the familiar sound of his e-mail dinging. A look of annoyance immediately crossed over his furrowed brow as he picked himself out of his armchair, carefully avoiding stepping on any piles of files and books he had laid out in less than neat stacks. 

“This better be good.” He murmured to himself, pulling his glasses down from where they had been resting on his forehead.

The sender was not a store who’s mailing list he’d accidentally ended up on nor was it a request from one of his colleagues asking if he had a certain file they needed. While the username bookworm1818 was normal enough-- though he didn’t know many professionals who wouldn’t simply use their own names in their email addresses-- the following letters and numbers were some gibberish that he couldn’t decipher to be an actual website. The subject line simply read: Visit Magnus Falls. Strange enough, but he clicked on it. 

Attached was not a message advertising the various tourist attractions of the “Magnus Falls” mentioned in the subject line, but rather what looked like a newspaper clipping that had been scanned haphazardly. Someone by the name of Timothy Stoker had written an article about a missing librarian, detailing that it had been several weeks since the man had been seen and that the library had remained locked in his absence with many people wondering when it would reopen to the public so they could continue checking out books and using facilities. Apparently, most of their population didn’t have personal computers. 

Jon let out a quiet snort. A vanishing librarian was hardly what he’d consider his forte, unless they thought that somehow a ghost or specter had snatched the poor fellow up in the night. More likely, the librarian had just left without warning to find a town with something more substantial to offer him. Idly, he continued to scroll down, if only to satisfy the weak sense he had of curiosity. 

Beneath the newspaper clipping was what seemed to be another scanned clipping, not from the same journalist as the first and likely not the same publication, given the change in font and format. The black and white photo attached showed some kind of crew pulling a car out of a lake. From what he could glean from scanning the article, it was only one incident in a series of them. And in every incident, any maps or GPS information had ended up gone, leaving local authorities unsure of what had happened to the owners of the vehicles and how those vehicles had ended up there. No bodies had ever been found in the lake or in any of the surrounding woods.

A missing person report was below, showing a handsome, smiling young man. If Jon didn’t know any better, he would think the photo was of some kind of model or taken straight from a fashion magazine. Beneath the photo, it read: Danny Stoker, last seen August 2013 with his brother Timothy Stoker, also missing, in a silver automobile on Hilltop Road. 

Jon pursed his lips, taking a long sip of his long gone cold coffee. The date on the librarian article was only a week or so old, so clearly the Timothy Stoker who wrote it was not, in fact, missing, if it was to be believed that the two were one in the same. He opened another tab and typed in Magnus Falls. An official website popped up, but from one look, Jon could determine that it probably hadn’t been updated since the invention of the internet. It took him at least three zooms in on the map before the town even showed up and even then it was in parentheses, as if the whole town was just an afterthought. 

The town was just off of the Hilltop Road mentioned in the report with only one road in and one road out, surrounded by trees on all ends and a lake just to box it in even further. The only thing within more than a few kilometers of the town was a truck stop by a name he didn’t recognize. No reviews. Figured.

Jon pulled himself away from the computer screen after a few moments of staring at the tiny name on the map. Questions crossed his mind like “Why did this get sent to me of all people?” and “Am I really thinking about driving all the way out into the woods because someone sent me an email?”

No, he wouldn’t, he decided. It just wasn’t worth his time.

He turned off his computer. He returned to his books and his armchair and continued to sip his cold coffee. When the night fell, he ate his dinner and went to bed at an early hour. He woke up only an hour or so later and went back to bed, feeling even more restless than before. The pattern only continued until it was 3 A.M. and he was lying on his bed, staring at the ceiling.

“I am not going to some town in the middle of nowhere over a  _ stupid  _ email.” He said in a whisper, saying it like it was a mantra. 

Jon stared at the ceiling even harder, twisting his face together in thought.

“I am  _ not  _ going to some town in the middle of nowhere, even though it would probably be nice to get away and get some fresh air and not think about writing papers and books for once.”

_ Great, you can’t even convince yourself properly. You make it sound like a vacation. _ Jon thought bitterly as he turned onto his side and squeezed his pillow tight.

By the time the sun began to shine in through his window, his bags were already packed and he had sent emails to all his colleagues letting them know he would be out of the city on a new project. He left a similar note on his landlady’s door, telling her likewise.

He got into his car and stared at himself in the rearview mirror. His hand moved towards the radio, putting it on some half static-y radio station before leaving. A printed out page of directions lay on the passenger seat, in the case that his GPS failed him, along with a tape recorder he used to take along with him on interviews. 

The radio wavered as he got further and further away from the city, the trees growing and growing with every passing hour. It was nice though, being the only one out on the open road and occasionally he got the treat of watching cows grazing on the hills.

It was almost noon when he reached the town. The weather, which was once relatively bright for an autumn day, had gone cloudy and gray, and the fog that had begun to collect made him nearly miss the turn into the town if the glowing sign of the truck stop hadn’t alerted him that it was coming soon. The road leading into the town winded around the trees, just narrow enough that Jon feared the kind of collision that might occur if another car was coming out at the same time. but it seemed empty enough. Eventually, the trees cleared and he could see the little town in full.

It didn’t stretch very far, seemingly boxed in by the tall trees that had begun shedding its red and orange leaves, looking more like a field of skeletons than anything. The road ended in a cul de sac, circled by what looked like a motel, post office, and police station. There didn’t seem to be many cars at all, but it looked like there weren’t many roads that weren’t made of dirt either, save for a single delivery truck with a logo he couldn’t quite read. 

Jon parked his car on the side of the road, peeking out of the window. It would probably make sense to go ahead and check into the motel while he had the time, but his eyes were drawn instead to what seemed to be an old-fashioned diner, a blinking neon sign of a coffee cup and pie in front serving as a beacon to weary travelers. As if on cue, his stomach growled like it had been holding it in during all the hours spent on the road.

“Must’ve forgotten this morning. “ He murmured to himself, pulling on his well-worn jacket before embarking out into the frigid afternoon. “What with all the  _ excitement  _ of packing.”

While the outside had been cold and gloomy, the diner was anything but, and warm in every sense of the word. Maybe he’d come at a busy hour, but the chatter of the locals inside layered over the sound of some old-fashioned song on the jukebox was such a stark contrast to what he had already gotten used to since the motel and arriving, Jon couldn’t help but be overwhelmed. Most of the patrons seemed to pay him no mind, save for a man who was propped up in a booth with a book and a scarf wrapped around his neck and most of his face and a woman who glared at him before returning to setting up what seemed like a fortress of napkin dispensers and salt shakers. His eyes scanned the counter, noting the display case full of what he suspected were freshly baked pies of at least a dozen different flavors and rows of doughnuts that were perfectly iced and sprinkles. 

A young woman wearing a teal waitress uniform and wire-rimmed glasses, was leaned over the edge of the counter, animatedly talking to two other customers. The one who seemed to be leaning over just as much as she was was quite handsome, with a face that Jon couldn’t help but find familiar though he was certain he had never seen the man before in his life. The other man had a soft, round face covered in freckles, a notebook tucked in his grip.

Jon cleared his throat. “Excuse me.”

The waitress straightened up, smoothing down her apron before coming to the side of the counter where he was waiting. Her name tag read “Sasha” followed by what looked like a smiley face sticker that had been faded from so much use. 

“How can I help you?” She gave him a smile.

“I could use a cup of coffee. And a newspaper, if you have one.” 

“Have a seat, I’ll be right with you.” 

Jon blinked at the lines of empty stools at the counter, but he could feel two sets of eyes on him at the end that he was hesitant to meet. His hand reached for a chair close to the door, before a loud voice startled him out of it.

“You aren’t really going to sit all alone, are you?” The one with the familiar face called out, waving his hand to get Jon’s attention. 

“That was the plan.” 

That obviously didn’t fly with the other as he was soon pulling out the chair beside him and gesturing for Jon to sit. It seemed impolite not to take the offer and while he didn’t mind being impolite, he wasn’t looking to alienate himself during his first hour of being in town. So he took the seat, as awkward as he felt.

“Jonathan Sims. I prefer Jon.” He held out his hand to shake.

The man took his hand and shook it heartily. “Stoker. Tim Stoker. I work with the paper.”

Tim? The same Tim from the articles? Maybe that was why he looked so familiar, family resemblance and all. “Tim, not… Danny?”

No kind of recollection crossed over the man’s face. “No? Why, is that a friend of yours?”

“Something like that.” Jon murmured, eyes lifting when the waitress, Sasha, came back with a cup of black coffee and a folded newspaper.

“Well, this is Martin.” Tim gestured to the man sitting next to him with the notebook. “Resident poet by day and also gift shop employee by day.”

Martin had the decency to look bashful at the description. “Nice to meet you.”

“And of course, you’ve already met the lovely Miss Sasha James, who keeps everyone well-stocked on coffee and pie.” She gave a quick curtsy at her introduction while also gracefully setting down a stack of napkins in front of him.

“What brings you to town? It’s not exactly tourist season.” She smiled.

Jon shrunk away from the attention, taking a long sip of his coffee. It was definitely better than the kind of crap he used to order at the fancy shops on his street, but he chose to not voice that opinion, instead dabbing at his face with a napkin. 

“Just wanted a breath of fresh air.” A pause as he adjusted his glasses. “I hear this is a good town for uh…  _ bookworms _ .”

The three of them all gave him a puzzled look. So much for trying to subtly drop a hint. Somehow, he already doubted any of them had sent the email, especially not Tim who had seemed genuinely confused at the mention of a Danny. Unless he had just been really keen on sharing his work.

“You might run into some problems there. The librarian’s been missing for weeks and he took his keys with him.” Tim remarked with a tilt of his head. “Unless you’re willing to break and enter for your reading material, in which case, I wish you the best of luck.”

“I am not.”

Tim shrugged before turning back to his own coffee. “Fair enough. Where are you staying?”

“I’m not sure where else I could be staying besides the motel.” 

The three of them exchanged a wordless glance before Sasha moved to the display case to take out a generous piece of pie. Jon tilted his head in confusion as she put it into a take out box and held it out to him.

“Sorry? I didn’t order pie.”

“It’s on the house.” Sasha gave a pitying look. “You’ll thank me once you see what their idea of a continental breakfast is.”

Jon took the box hesitantly before picking himself off his seat. “...I’ll make a note of it. I should go and check in though. Thanks for the help.”

Digging into his pocket, he pulled out a few crumpled bills and coins and probably a spare button or two if he was honest with himself and slid it across the counter before hurrying out and back to his car. He thought he could hear Tim making a joke about whether she’d be spending it all in one place, but he ignored it.

The motel room was far from the nicest he’d ever stayed in during his travels, what with the peeling, dark red wallpaper and dim, flickering lights that made it look more foreboding than anything. But it would do just fine for his investigation. He set his suitcase on top of the bed, setting aside the clothes he’d be wearing the next day before pulling out the stack of papers printed off containing every detail he could find scouring the internet about Magnus Falls. Even as he began spreading them out on the floor and every surface he could find, he knew he had barely touched the surface.

Plopping onto the floor, Jon took out his tape recorder and hit the record button.

“This is Jonathan Sims speaking: I have arrived at the town of Magnus Falls and met with some of the locals at the diner nearby, including the Timothy Stoker I believe was mentioned in the email. Note to self: don’t get the continental breakfast.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> does england have tiny towns in the middle of the woods? idc, consider it artistic license since most of the genre this takes inspiration from takes place in the pacific northwest and as someone from there, that's what i have the most experience with.
> 
> sorry for not a lot of martin content in this chapter, he will be more prominent in the later ones. as this fic is kinda meant to follow the main plot through jon's pov, i will also be doing one shots involving other characters and their subplots so as not to split up the main story. 
> 
> comments are appreciated! find me on tumblr at timsashas.


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